Forevermore is a five-piece metalcore band from Indianapolis, Indiana. They’re an unsigned act, but they’ve managed to rack up quite a few likes on Facebook (they recently passed 18,000) with only one release under their belt. After a few minor delays, they’re back with their second full-length release entitled Sojourner. So far, it can be streamed and purchased from Bandcamp, but it will also be available on iTunes and Amazon shortly.
The first thing that I, and I’m sure many others, notice when listening to something for the first time is the vocals. The harsh vocals on Forevermore’ Sojourner become a little monotonous at times, but there are several cleanly sung choruses to spice things up, and even a guest appearance by Periphery’s Spencer Sotelo! The vocalist really shines on tracks like “Faithful And Just” and “Succubus” because of a slightly wider range as well as belting out some particularly impressive clean vocals.
Instrumentally, I was very pleased with what I heard throughout Sojourner‘s 45-minute playtime. In my opinion, the strongest track on the album is the twelfth track titled “What Never Changes”, but there are several other noteworthy tracks (“Faithful And Just” and “The Awakening”, to name a few). Because the album is fairly long, the riffs and melodies do sound similar to a point on some tracks, but never once do they sound entirely repetitive or stale. The drumming isn’t exactly mindblowing, but there are the occasional flashes of brilliance displayed on Sojourner. The guitarists and the drummer nearly left me in a state of awe by the time the previously mentioned “What Never Changes” closed out the album. The bass could be a bit more presentable, but it’s fairly audible and sounds good from what I can hear.
Production and mixing-wise, Sojourner is also very solid. For the most part, nothing is really too overpowering and everything blends together quite nicely. The only things that I wasn’t very fond of was how almost every track had ten seconds of complete silence before the next song started or it would fade in/fade out, and the fact that the brief instrumental titled “Aporia” seemed unnecessary. “Aporia” comes off as a filler track and does not serve much of a purpose but to add another breakdown and extend the album’s playtime by one minute.
Going into my first listen of Sojourner, I wasn’t entirely sure of what to expect. I had heard quite a bit about Forevermore through friends in the past few months, but I never got around to listening to them until the other day. As soon the album kicked off with “The Curse Of Complacency”, however, I was glad that I decided to finally give Forevermore a chance. Basically, if you imagine what an album would sound like if you took the mid-high screams of August Burns Red and combined them with the instrumentals of This Or The Apocalypse, the result is Forevermore’s Sojourner. With the occasional groovy chugging and post-hardcore style clean vocals, though, the band keeps things fairly unexpected and makes it easy for the listener to differentiate between Forevermore and the aforementioned bands.
Links: Facebook – Bandcamp
